Most YouTubers who play Hitman get to hunt someone else. Seán McLoughlin, better known as Jacksepticeye, has just played a mission in which the target is a character he plays himself, and his video doubles as a pitch for a charity drive.
The mission is part of Hitman: World of Assassination. As Destructoid reports, the target is Finn Colton, "better known by his online handle Finnvictus", a "popular, controversial, and now very wealthy content creator" who livestreams his life from a remote content complex in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. McLoughlin provides both the likeness and the voice. Destructoid says the mission went live on October 29 as part of a free trial period for World of Assassination that runs through November 25.
The charity part is in McLoughlin's own description of the video. He says IO Interactive will donate $1 to Thankmas, his charity event, for every successful Silent Assassin completion of the mission, up to $25,000, and he links to a donation page for anyone who wants to give directly. He explains the pledge at the start of the video (0:00).
A parody, not a self-portrait
The most revealing moment comes early. McLoughlin says that when IO Interactive approached him the answer was an immediate yes (0:33), and that he preferred playing a fictional influencer to playing himself, because his own life as a gamer would make a fairly boring assassination (0:52). Finn is the result: a send-up of the loudest kind of creator rather than of McLoughlin.
He is full of praise for the studio, including its speed, its writing and the collaborative process, and singles out the mission's writer for the script (4:45). Partway through, he also notes how odd it is to hear streaming slang in a Hitman script, while observing that plenty of real creators really do talk like that (11:23).
In the statement Destructoid quotes, he says he has been playing Hitman with his community for years and calls Finn "loud, paranoid, and completely obsessed with content".
What the video shows
Without spoiling the mission, the video is a long playthrough in which McLoughlin tries several approaches, from the podcast-guest cover the briefing sets up (5:28) to a game of beer pong with his own character (31:10). It is as much a tour of the jokes IO Interactive has written into Finn's house as a guide, and it's the easiest way to see the mission before trying it yourself.
He closes by thanking the team and calling the role a dream come true (63:58), which matches the line in his description: "So glad ioi asked me to be in the game."
How viewers reacted
The comments posted by the video's six-hour mark are delighted, and mostly playing along with the joke. Many compliment McLoughlin's impression of Finn, several joke that the man in the facecam looks uncannily like the target, and a number say the character works as a satire of a familiar kind of controversial creator. That's crowd mood, not a verdict on the mission.
Riley's take: Plenty of celebrities have been Hitman targets, but casting a creator as a parody of creator culture is a sharper joke, and pairing it with Silent Assassin runs for charity gives players a reason to do it properly rather than just chaotically. That's a nice bit of design for a promotion.
From the creators
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